When All Is Said And Done...
by Redclia
Summary: (Formally titled Aftermath) Not really a poem, just kinda poetic. People (Rafe, Evelyn, Danny, a Chinese peasant, Admiral Yamamoto) look back on the war.
1. Rafe McCawley

Disclaimer: I am not associated with the people of _Pearl Harbor_ in any way professionally.

Author's Note: If there are any other characters you think I should write about, please review and tell me who. J 

I know that those who survived are the lucky ones.  At least I think they are the lucky ones.  Because they can go on and turn away from this war-stricken place that is a gravesite for so many.  I am one of those who have survived.  I feel relieved that I lived, but guilty that I did and my friends and comrades did not.  But us lucky ones, we have to live.  For a sailor aboard one of the ships, to live with the feel of the explosions sending shudders through the ship, ripping it apart.  To watch friends be hurled into the air, to be tossed into the churning sea, to be burned by oil and fire.  To play memories of burning water lined with blood through their heads.  For a nurse, to watch soldiers die beneath their hands.  To hear the screams of the wounded and dying over and over.  To watch the blood pour from the open wounds.  To relive the chaos, the nightmare that was the once-pristine hospital.  For a pilot in the skies, to watch a comrade go spinning through the sky, wings and engines ablaze, to billow into a fireball death.  To hear that dreaded call, "Mayday!  Mayday!" as a friend hurtles toward the sea.  To see the bloodstained, bullet-ridden cockpits of planes afterwards.  For any military person, to see close friends die, maybe from afar, is a nightmare.  Or worse yet, seeing a friend die close by.  For me, I felt the life drain from the body of my best friend.  I held him as he fought for breath, knowing that he was to die.  He was a brave man, my friend, but even brave men have to die.  I have to live with the memory of that man dying in my arms, watching the light in his eyes dim and finally fade away into nothingness.  Other friends are gone, some who were only fighting to save lives as doctors and nurses, others who were fighting for our nation.  Still, we showed the world that we could fight back.  We showed Americans that we could fight.  


	2. Evelyn Stewart

I am one who saves lives and it sickened me to watch the battle unfold outside. Inside was not better, it was possibly worse. The burned, bleeding bodies lay everywhere, for the beds had long since been taken. The voices I will remember forever, their piteous cries echo in my mind. The blood was a livid stain, spreading over me, through me, from everything. The red blood of sailors mixed with the oil blood of ships and planes. The painful tears of blood wept from torn bodies to stain everything. Yet some were oddly untouched, perfect except for one thing. They were dead. My roommate and friend was one of them. She looked as though she were sleeping, face and hair unmarred by ash, blood or debris. But she was dead, shot in the stomach. And the raid to bomb Tokyo that took the two men I love and sent them into the heart of the enemy, that was a night that, to me, will live in infamy. The raid itself did not accomplish much; it did not destroy an entire fleet or terrorize a nation, but it showed Japan that we were willing to fight. And the two men that raid took were pilots, flying in an aerial maneuver never before attempted. They both came back, but one was heartbroken and the other was lying dead in a coffin. My heart weeps for them, both of them. One for losing his best and closest friend, the other for losing his future and his life. But we will survive, he and I, all three of us, actually. One in flesh and blood, one in spirit, both in my heart, bound with love.   
  
  



	3. Danny Walker

Those of us who died are remembered. Honored, mourned for. For some, death is a relief, to finally return to the earth from whence we all came. To leave the brutal bloodbath that is called war. But not me. This is not what I want. I do not scorn my best friends' memorial for me, nor do I scorn their tears. But I don't want to be here. I would trade the sadness, the medal, the memorial, all of it just to be able to fly again. That was my life. To be able to soar through the sky again, to live again. The war was exhilarating, in a word. But not because of the killing, because of the chance to let loose and fly freely. To twist and dive and live through the plane, having it as an extension of the pilot, of me. And of my friend, who fought for me, who lives now for me. He always fought for me, with me. He fought my inevitable death. The last words I heard him say were a desperate plea to save me. I am a father, he said. A father. If I were alive, where would I be? With my child, my son, my daughter. With the love of my life, the woman who brought the sun into my life. I would be, if I were alive. I am dead, lying in the ground, as far away from the sky and its freedom as possible. Bitterness will gain me nothing. But how can I not feel this frustration? 


	4. A Chinese Peasant

Author's Note: This chapter is from the point of view of a character out of the book, not the movie.

Excitement was something I never expected in my life as a peasant.  Farming was my life, my job, my existence.  Until the night the sky fell.  American planes are coming! my baba said. Follow me and we will help them if they crash!  I ran after him, into the darkness and suddenly my eyes were blinded by a flash of fire as a plane crashed nearby.  Right into our rice fields.  I had a moment to grieve over the lost money and meals that the plane destroyed before I heard the shots.  A Japanese patrol had found the Americans.  Other farmers ran up beside us, watching the dark shapes of Japanese soldier and American pilots move around.  What do we do? I asked my baba.  We will help them, he replied fiercely.  And we did.  We rushed upon the Japanese soldiers and killed them, there, in our fields.  There was one American soldier who was dying.  Some of us crowded around him, unsure of what to do, when his friend pushed us aside.  We watched as the American man died, and his friend held his body and wept.  And I knew that I would become a soldier when I grew up.  I would not live a farmer's life.  Even if I had to die in a foreign country, surrounded by strangers, I would become a soldier.  I would fight for my life and country like the American pilot fought and died for his.    


	5. Admiral Yamamoto

I knew that the attack had been a bad idea.  Actually, it was a good idea, a brilliant one, from a military standpoint, but it still seemed to be a bad idea.  There were so many holes in the plan.  What if the aircraft carriers had been at the harbor?  Our planes would have been defeated easily.  What if our carriers had been spotted?  The element of surprise would have been lost.  And once again, our planes would have been destroyed.  There were so many ways for something to go wrong.  But the Americans were blinded by their thoughts of invincibility.  It was almost easy to slip in unnoticed and cripple the fleet.  And then, later, when the Americans retaliated, it was clear that they were no longer blinded.  Their attack was pointless to some, but it forced me to look at them and see what they were saying with their suicidal mission. Look at us, they were saying, We have courage, we have strength, and we will fight you!  And they did.  And they won, and we fell.  But we arose again, to become allies with that nation.  The same nation that scorned my people in America.  The same nation that herded them into concentration camps and sold their homes and shops.  Now, this anger must be put aside as we work to build a stronger Japan, a better Japan.


End file.
